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Laughing and screaming - Page 2

Amara Tabor-Smith's Our Daily Bread transformed CounterPULSE into something akin to a home, with moments of love and fury

PHOTO BY ANA TERESA FERNANDEZ

In the second half Bread became much darker as it focused more tightly on the exploitative farming practices that prevent communities with little economic power from accessing wholesome food and allow middle-class Americans to spend less of their food budget. An old news clip described "hard-working" braceros working in the fields. The reporter was so condescending in the way he described the "efficiency" of these farming practices, you wanted to scream. The choreographic response paid tribute to the workers' physical gestures.

In the beginning, Bread meandered. Its ending — a memorial service honoring a Latino teenager who died of heat exhaustion because of no access to water — came at you with the force of a divine revenge. Imagine a wake in which weeping turns into screaming whose fury quite possibly might awaken the dead.